Speech #1010145482

The freight it carried was precious cargo indeedthousands of Christian families fleeing persecution for their religious beliefs. beliefs which are among the most cherished and protected in our Constitution. Here is how it used to work. Christian religious refugees would apply to emigrate. using the polite diplomatic fiction that they were going to live with relatives In Israel. because Soviet authorities have tended to be more permissive about emigration to Israel. After traveling to Vienna or Rome. they declared their true intention of emigrating to the United States. This system worked fine until recently when the State Department. late last fall. decided to save money by avoiding the considerable cost of housing Soviet religious refugees in expensive European capitals. Instead. all Soviet refugee processing is being handled from our embassy in Moscow. Now. the State Department has learned of one group that was particularly disadvantaged by the U.S. change in refugee processing: About 900 familiesthat is. approximately 6.000 individualsof Soviet Pentecostals. Evangelicals. and Baptists. These families had given up their homes. their life savings. their jobs. their ration cards. and their internal passports and proceeded to Moscow where they were given exit visas for refugee processing centers in Rome and Vienna. To their surprise and dismay. they can no longer pretend to be going to Israel and proceed speedily to Vienna and Rome. They now must wait in Moscow for the United States to complete its many months of processing. Their hope is that. eventually. they will be allowed to travel directly from Moscow to the United States. Once their plight was brought to the attention of U.S. officials. the State Department did schedule interviews for these 6.000 with Immigration and Naturalization Service [INS] officers by the end of August of this year. State claims this is adequate to ensure these families are all brought into the United States by January 1. 1991. but it doesnt appear possible if you talk to some of the volunteer refugee organizations. They tell me that today. once refugees are interviewed by our embassy. they are told their paperwork will be ready in 6 months. Then these men and women must apply for exit visas again and secure a seat on Aeroflotan ordeal that often takes more than a year if you have only rubles to spend. So today we have about 6.000 people. mostly families. spread around Moscow without any means of selfsupport. The State Department could have alleviated the problem. but they did not. To them. a year of limbo for a victim of a U.S. policy change is not too much. My own view is that these refugees first experience of the United States ought to be a better one than that of a bureaucratic snafu causing distressed families a year of needless misery and uncertainty. My amendment directs the State Department to do one of two things to fix the problem. They are required either to use an equitable share of the resources available in this section of the bill to fund the existing 2.000 semifunded refugee admissions numbersactually these are completely unfundedor to reallocate refugee admissions numbers within this fiscal year to allow adequate funding and admission of this group. Others more familiar with the ins and outs of refugee processing tell me the United States expects to have many unused refugee admission slots for this year. They report fewer Ukrainians are applying than originally anticipated. that the Vietnamese Government has slowed the applications of Vietnamese refugees causing an anticipated shortfall in Vietnamese refugees. and that we may even have fewer Cubans than expected. My amendment does not direct any cuts to these existing refugee allocations. it just instructs the State Department to reallocate any unused billets to this group of Soviet refugees caught by the shift in United States policy. If a reallocation is not possible. my amendment directs the application of resources available in this section of the bill to fund the existing unfunded refugee slots. Senators may ask themselves if these provisions would affect other refugees who are also disadvantaged. especially Soviet Jews whom many of us have gone to great lengths to protect. Frankly. there is absolutely no reason this amendment should have any adverse impact on refugee numbers already agreed to. In fact. it is the specific intent of this Senator that the funding for these 2.000 unfunded ref ugee slots not come from a bureaucratic tradeoff of these 2.000 unfunded slots against 2.000 slots that are already funded for other classes of refugees. The State Departments refugee programs section tells me. to meet this years increased refugee burden. it has cut per refugee payments to volunteer groups from the usual $560 per refugee for reception and placement costs to $525 per refugee. Part of the $75 million in the migration and refugee assistance section of this bill is designed to reimburse these organizations. but many of them report they have been budgeting $525 per refugee since the budgetary cut. and therefore might not require a full $35 per refugee repayment. Cutting some of this payback is one method by which the State Department couldwithout disadvantaging any other class of refugeeprovide funds for all or part of the 2.000 unfunded slots for Soviet evangelical refugees. My amendment does not take care of all 6.000 evangelicals caught in the U.S. policy shift. But it should allow us to process the first third of them by early this summer. thereby speeding up the entire process for the remaining twothirds.